Every year, organizers of the Vita Plus Corporation Dairy Summit use a mountain theme to encourage the dairy producers in attendance to set goals and place their operations in a position to obtain those goals. However, from the time producers left the previous Dairy Summit in early December 2008 until this year’s summit, December 2 and 3, the dairy industry shifted so much that in 2009 Vita Plus begged the question “Who moved my mountain?” to set the stage for its event.
More than 300 people attended the event this year in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They had the opportunity to visit three nearby dairies: Pagelâs Ponderosa Dairy in Kewaunee featuring 4,600 cows, a 72-cow rotary parlor and methane digester; Hallâs Calf Ranch in Kewaunee featuring 3,000 calves from birth to weaning, calf hutches and greenhouses; and Shiloh Dairy LLC in Brillion featuring 1,500 cows, a double-22 milking parlor and a sand-separating system.
Conference topics included taking a look at the dairy economy, understanding your pollution potential, market updates, prepartum cow comfort, decision making, vaccination approaches, telling your story, grass forages in diets and industry advocacy. The final session was a producer panel where Midwestern dairy producers shared the strategies they implemented to get through 2009 and how they plan to move ahead. PD
Visit Vita Plus Events to read summaries from the Dairy Summit.
